Tonight at yoga we were staggered 3 in the front and 3 in the back. I took a back row spot per my usual. We went into a tree pose (pretty standard you put all your weight on one foot and then the other foot can either go toe to the ground, foot to the calf, foot to the thigh or tucked up into the groin and then hold). I don’t know why but my preferred foot placement is calf and then to close my eyes and see if I can keep from needing to put my foot down. Closed eyes always adds a challenge to the movement because eyesight is one of the main ways we keep balance. However, today, I decided I was going to keep eyes open, focus on a spot and see if I could go the 90 or so seconds without bringing my foot down. The challenge here turned out to be the innate desire of my eyes (and everyone else’s) to be particularly sensitive to movement. As long as I could focus on the same spot, I remained balanced. The problem came when those in the front row between me wobbled, my eyes would catch sight of them, lose focus on my stationary spot and then I would faulter. Here is an adaptive mechanism, sensing movement, that prevented my ancestors from death preventing me from doing what I want to accomplish. I giggled to myself and thought about how applicable this is to other parts of my life. I can be moving along doing my best or what is good for me and then all of a sudden I see what others are doing and not only do I begin to lose focus on my own things but faulter in what I was doing myself. Comparison and judgement helped us survive because it could help make quick decisions, but in the long run it can hurt us especially when we forget we are only ourselves. I think John Wooden summarized it best with ”The best competition I have is against myself to become better...Never try to be better than someone else. Learn from others and try to be the best you can be.”